title: Long-term doctor-patient relationships: patient perspective from online reviews.
abstract: BACKGROUND
  Continuity of patient care is one of the cornerstones of primary care.
  
  
  OBJECTIVE
  To examine publicly available, Internet-based reviews of adult primary care physicians, specifically written by patients who report long-term relationships with their physicians.
  
  
  METHODS
  This substudy was nested within a larger qualitative content analysis of online physician ratings. We focused on reviews reflecting an established patient-physician relationship, that is, those seeing their physicians for at least 1 year.
  
  
  RESULTS
  Of the 712 Internet reviews of primary care physicians, 93 reviews (13.1%) were from patients that self-identified as having a long-term relationship with their physician, 11 reviews (1.5%) commented on a first-time visit to a physician, and the remainder of reviews (85.4%) did not specify the amount of time with their physician. Analysis revealed six overarching domains: (1) personality traits or descriptors of the physician, (2) technical competence, (3) communication, (4) access to physician, (5) office staff/environment, and (6) coordination of care.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  Our analysis shows that patients who have been with their physician for at least 1 year write positive reviews on public websites and focus on physician attributes.
authors.affiliation: UCLA Division of General Internal Medicine and Health Services Research, University of California, Los Angeles, Los Angeles, CA, United States.
authors.forename: Alissa
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Detz
authors.forename: Andrea
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: López
authors.forename: Urmimala
authors.initials: U
authors.lastname: Sarkar
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D002983:Clinical Competence; D003266:Continuity of Patient Care; D006297:Health Services Accessibility; D006801:Humans; D020407:Internet; D010361:Patients / Q000523:psychology*; D010551:Personality; D010817:Physician-Patient Relations
keywords: primary care; qualitative; social media